An Actor Prepares

by Constantin Stanislavsky

  ‘How can we teach unobservant people to notice what nature and life are trying to show them? First of all they must be taught to look at, to listen to, and to hear what is beautiful. Such habits elevate their minds and arouse feelings which will leave deep traces in their emotion memories. Nothing in life is more beautiful than nature, and it should be the object of constant observation. To begin with, take a little flower, or a petal from it, or a spider web, or a design made by frost on the window pane. Try to express in words what it is in these things that gives pleasure. Such an effort causes you to observe the object more closely, more effectively, in order to appreciate it and define its qualities. And do not shun the darker side of nature. Look for it in marshes, in the slime of the sea, amid plagues of insects and remember that hidden behind these phenomena there is beauty, just as in loveliness there is unloveliness. What is truly beautiful has nothing to fear from disfigurement. Indeed, disfigurement often emphasizes and sets off beauty in higher relief.

  ‘Search out both beauty and its opposite, and define them, learn to know and to see them, Otherwise your conception of beauty will be incomplete, saccharine, prettified, sentimental.

  ‘Next turn to what the human race has produced in art, literature, music.

  ‘At the bottom of every process of obtaining creative material for our work is emotion. Feeling, however, does not replace an immense amount of work on the part of our intellects. Perhaps you are afraid that the little touches which your mind may add on its own account will spoil your material drawn from life? Never fear that. Often these original additions enhance it greatly if your belief in them is sincere.

  ‘Let me tell you about an old woman I once saw trundling a baby carriage along a boulevard. In it was a cage with a canary. Probably the woman had placed all her bundles in the carriage to get them home more easily. But I wanted to see things in a different light, so I decided that the poor old woman had lost all of her children and grand-children and the only living creature left in her life was—this canary. So she was taking him out for a ride on the boulevard, just as she had done, not long before, her grandson, now lost. All this is more interesting and suited to the theatre than the actual truth. Why should I not tuck that impression into the storehouse of my memory? I am not a census taker, who is responsible for collecting exact facts. I am an artist who must have material that will stir my emotions.

  ‘After you have learned how to observe life around you and draw on it for your work you will turn to the study of the most necessary, important and living emotional material on which your main creativeness is based. I mean those impressions which you get from direct, personal intercourse with other human beings. This material is difficult to obtain because in large part it is intangible, indefinable, and only inwardly perceivable. To be sure, many invisible, spiritual experiences are reflected in our facial expression, in our eyes, voice, speech, gestures, but even so it is no easy thing to sense another’s inmost being, because people do not often open the doors of their souls and allow others to see them as they really are.

  ‘When the inner world of someone you have under observation becomes clear to you through his acts, thoughts and impulses, follow his actions closely and study the conditions in which he finds himself. Why did he do this or that? What did he have in his mind?

  ‘Very often we cannot come through definite data to know the inner life of the person we are studying, and can only reach towards it by means of intuitive feeling. Here we are dealing with the most delicate type of concentration of attention, and with powers of observation that are subconscious in their origin. Our ordinary type of attention is not sufficiently far-reaching to carry out the process of penetrating another person’s soul.

  ‘If I were to assure you that your technique could achieve so much I should be deceiving you. As you progress you will learn more and more ways in which to stimulate your subconscious selves, and to draw them into your creative process, but it must be admitted that we cannot reduce this study of the inner life of other human beings to a scientific technique.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  RELAXATION OF MUSCLES

  1

  When the Director came into the classroom he called on Maria, Vanya and me to play the scene where the money is burned.

  We went on the stage and started.

  In the beginning things went well. But when we reached the tragic part I felt that something inside of me faltered, then, to give myself some support from outside, I pressed with all my strength against some object under my hand. Suddenly something cracked; at the same time I felt a sharp pain; some warm liquid wet my hand.

  I am not sure when I fainted. I remember some confusion of sounds. After that increasing weakness, dizziness and then unconsciousness.

  My unfortunate accident (I had grazed an artery and lost so much blood that I was in bed for some days) led the Director to make a change of plan, and take up ahead of schedule part of our physical training. A summary of his remarks was given me by Paul.

  Tortsov said: ‘It will be necessary to interrupt the strictly systematic development of our programme, and to explain to you, somewhat ahead of the usual order, an important step which we call “Freeing our Muscles”. The natural point at which I should tell you about this is when we come to the external side of our training. But Kostya’s situation leads to our discussing this question now.

  ‘You cannot, at the very beginning of our work, have any conception of the evil that results from muscular spasms and physical contraction. When such a condition occurs in the vocal organs a person with otherwise naturally good tones becomes hoarse or even loses his voice. If such contraction attacks the legs, an actor walks like a paralytic; if it is in his hands, they grow numb and move like sticks. The same sort of spasms occur in the spine, the neck and the shoulders. In each case they cripple the actor and prevent him from playing. It is worst of all, however, when this condition affects his face, twisting his features, paralysing them, or making his expression turn to stone. The eyes protrude, the taut muscles give an unpleasant look to the face, expressing quite the contrary of what is going on inside the actor, and bearing no relation to his emotions. The spasms can attack the diaphragm and other organs connected with breathing and interfere with proper respiration and cause shortness of breath. This muscular tautness affects other parts of the body also and cannot but have a deleterious effect on the emotions the actor is experiencing, his expression of them, and his general state of feeling.

  ‘To convince you of how physical tenseness paralyses our actions, and is bound up with our inner life, let us make an experiment. Over there is a grand piano. Try to lift it.’

  The students, in turn, made tremendous efforts and succeeded in raising only one corner of the heavy instrument.

  ‘While you are holding the piano up, multiply quickly thirty-seven times nine,’ said the Director to one of the students. ‘You can’t do it? Well, then, use your visual memory to recall all the stores along the street from the corner to the theatre. . . . Can’t do that either? Then sing me the Cavatina from Faust. No luck? Well, try to remember the taste of a dish of kidney stew, or the feel of silk plush, or the smell of something burning.’

  To carry out his orders the student let down the corner of the piano, which he had been holding up with great effort, rested for a moment, recalled the questions put to him, let them sink into his consciousness, and then began to respond to them, calling up each required sensation. After that he renewed his muscular effort, and with difficulty lifted one corner of the piano.

  ‘So you see’, said Tortsov, ‘that in order to answer my questions you had to let down the weight, relax your muscles, and only then could you devote yourself to the operation of your five senses.

  ‘Doesn’t this prove that muscular tautness interferes with inner emotional experience? As long as you have this physical tenseness you cannot even think about delicate shadings of feeling or the spiritual life of your part. Consequently, before you attempt to create
anything it is necessary for you to get your muscles in proper condition, so that they do not impede your actions.

  ‘Here is the convincing case of Kostya’s accident. Let us hope that his misfortune will serve as an effective lesson to him, and to you all, in what you must not do on the stage.’

  ‘But is it possible to rid yourself of this tenseness?’ someone asked.

  The Director recalled the actor described in My Life in Art, who suffered from a particularly strong tendency to muscular spasms. With the aid of acquired habits and constant checking up, he was able to reach the point where, as soon as he set foot on the stage, his muscles began to soften. The same thing happened at critical moments in creating his part—his muscles of their own accord tried to shake off all tensity.

  ‘It is not only a strong general muscular spasm that interferes with proper functioning. Even the slightest pressure at a given point may arrest the creative faculty. Let me give you an example. A certain actress, with a wonderful temperament, was able to use it only at rare and accidental intervals. Ordinarily her emotions were replaced by plain effort. She was worked over from the point of view of loosening up her muscles, but with only partial success. Quite accidentally, in the dramatic parts of her role, her right eyebrow would contract, ever so slightly. So I suggested that when she came to these difficult transitions in her part she should try to get rid of all tenseness in her face and completely free it. When she was able to accomplish this, all the rest of the muscles in her body relaxed spontaneously. She was transformed. Her body became light, her face became mobile and expressed her inner emotions vividly. Her feelings had gained a free outlet to the surface.

  ‘Just think: the pressure of one muscle, at a single point, had been able to throw out her whole organism, both spiritually and physically!’

  2

  Nicholas, who came to see me today, asserts that the Director said it is impossible completely to free the body from all unnecessary tenseness. Aside from being impossible, it is also superfluous. And yet Paul, from the same remarks of Tortsov, concluded that to relax our muscles is absolutely incumbent on us, both when we are on the stage, and in ordinary life.

  How can these contradictions be reconciled?

  As Paul came after Nicholas, I give his explanation:

  ‘As a human being, an actor is inevitably subject to muscular tensity. This will set in whenever he appears in public. He can rid himself of the pressure in his back, and it will go to his shoulder. Let him chase it away from there and it will appear in his diaphragm. Constantly in some place or other there will be pressure.

  ‘Among the nervous people of our generation this muscular tensity is inescapable. To destroy it completely is impossible, but we must struggle with it incessantly. Our method consists of developing a sort of control; an observer, as it were. This observer must, under all circumstances, see that at no point shall there be an extra amount of contraction. This process of self-observation and removal of unnecessary tenseness should be developed to the point where it becomes a subconscious, mechanical habit. Nor is that sufficient. It must be a normal habit and a natural necessity, not only during the quieter parts of your role, but especially at times of the greatest nervous and physical lift.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I exclaimed. ‘That one should not be tense in moments of excitement?’

  ‘Not only should you not be tense,’ explained Paul, ‘but you should make all the greater effort to relax.’

  He went on to quote the Director as saying that actors usually strain themselves in the exciting moments. Therefore, at times of great stress it is especially necessary to achieve a complete freeing of the muscles. In fact, in the high moments of a part the tendency to relax should become more normal than the tendency to contraction.

  ‘Is that really feasible?’ I asked.

  ‘The Director asserts that it is,’ Paul said. ‘He does add that although it is not possible to get rid of all tenseness at an exciting point yet one can learn constantly to relax. Let the tenseness come, he says, if you cannot avoid it. But immediately let your control step in and remove it.’

  Until this control becomes a mechanical habit, it will be necessary to give a lot of thought to it, and that will detract from our creative work. Later, this relaxing of the muscles should become a normal phenomenon. This habit should be developed daily, constantly, systematically, both during our exercises at school and at home. It should proceed while we are going to bed or getting up, dining, walking, working, resting, in moments of joy and of sorrow. The ‘controller’ of our muscles must be made part of our physical make-up, our second nature. Only then will it cease to interfere when we are doing creative work. If we relax our muscles only during special hours set aside for that purpose, we cannot get results, because such exercises are not custom-forming, they cannot become unconscious, mechanical habits.

  When I showed doubt at the possibility of doing what Paul had just explained to me, he gave the Director’s own experiences as an example. It seems that in his early years of artistic activity, muscular tenseness developed in him almost to the point of cramp—and yet, since he has developed a mechanical control, he feels the need of relaxing at times of intense nerve excitement rather than the need to stiffen his muscles.

  3

  Today I was also called on by Rakhmanov, the Assistant Director, who is a very agreeable person. He brought me greetings from Tortsov, and said he had been sent to instruct me in some exercises.

  The Director had said: ‘Kostya can’t be busy while he is lying there in bed, so let him try out some appropriate way of spending his time.’

  The exercise consists of lying on my back on a flat, hard surface, such as the floor, and making a note of various groups of muscles throughout my body that are unnecessarily tense.

  ‘I feel a contraction in my shoulder, neck, shoulder-blade, around my waist——’

  The places noted should then be immediately relaxed, and others searched out. I tried to do this simple exercise in front of Rakhmanov, only instead of on the floor I lay on a soft bed. After I had relaxed the tense muscles and left only such as seemed necessary to bear the weight of my body I named the following places:

  ‘Both shoulder blades and base of the spinal cord.’ But Rakhmanov objected. ‘You should do as small children and animals do,’ he said firmly.

  It seems that if you lay an infant, or a cat, on some sand, to rest or to sleep, and then carefully lift him up, you will find the imprint of his whole body on the soft surface. But if you make the very same experiment with a person of our nervous generation, all you will find on the sand are the marks of his shoulder blades and rump—whereas all the rest of his body, thanks to chronic muscle tension, will never touch the sand at all.

  In order to make a sculptural imprint on a soft surface, when we lie down we must rid our bodies of every muscular contraction. That will give the body a better chance to rest. In lying this way, you can in half an hour or an hour refresh yourself more than by a whole night of lying in a constrained position. No wonder that caravan drivers use this method. They cannot remain long in the desert, so the time they can give to rest is limited. Instead of a long rest the same result is brought about by completely freeing their bodies from muscular tension.

  The Assistant Director makes constant use of this method during his short periods of rest between his day and evening occupations. After ten minutes of this kind of rest he feels completely refreshed. Without this breathing spell he could not possibly do all the work that falls to him.

  As soon as Rakhmanov had gone I found our cat and laid him on one of the soft pillows on my sofa. He left a complete imprint of his body. I decided to learn from him how to rest.

  The Director says: ‘An actor, like an infant, must learn everything from the beginning, to look, to walk, to talk, and so on. . . . We all know how to do these things in ordinary life. But unfortunately, the vast majority of us do them badly. One reason for this is that any defects show up much more not
iceably in the full glare of the footlights, and another is that the stage has a bad influence on the general state of the actor.’ Obviously these words of Tortsov apply also to lying down. That is why I now lie on the sofa with the cat. I watch him sleep and try to imitate the way he does it. But it is no easy matter to lie so that not one muscle is tense and so that all the parts of your body touch the surface. I can’t say that it is difficult to note this or that contracted muscle. And it’s no particular trick to loosen it up. But the trouble is that you no sooner get rid of one tight muscle than another appears, and a third, and so on. The more you notice them, the more there are of them. For a while I succeeded in getting rid of tenseness in the region of my back and neck. I can’t say that this resulted in any feeling of renewed vigour but it did make clear to me how much superfluous, harmful tenseness we are subject to without realizing it. When you think of the treacherously contracting eyebrow of that actress you begin seriously to fear physical tenseness.

  My main difficulty seems to be that I become confused among a variety of muscular sensations. This multiplies by ten the number of points of tenseness and also increases the intensity of each. I end up by not knowing where my hands or head are.

  How tired I am from today’s exercises!

  You don’t get any rest from the kind of lying down in which I have been indulging.

  4

  Today Leo stopped by and told me about the drill at school. Rakhmanov, following the Director’s orders, had the students lie motionless, then take a variety of poses, both horizontal and vertical, sitting up straight, half sitting, standing, half standing, kneeling, crouching, alone, in groups, with chairs, with a table or other furniture. In each position they had to make a note of the tense muscles and name them. Obviously some muscles would be tense in each of the poses. But only those directly involved should be allowed to remain contracted, and not any others in the vicinity. Also one must remember that there are various types of tenseness. A muscle which is necessary to holding a given position may be contracted but only as much as is necessary to the pose.